The health industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. As the business grows and we add this vertical to our areas of interest at AskDaveTaylor, we will be attending a variety of upcoming medical device and health focused conventions this year.

Most recently I attended HRS, the Health Rhythm Society, with a colleague, Ben Kinsella, who has been in the medical simulation industry for the past decade. The show is focused on the industry niche of heart medical devices in use with Electrophysiology. It featured more than 8,000 attendees, 250 educational sessions, and more than 130 exhibitors showcasing innovative products and services within the industry.

Heart Rhythm 2013 builds on years of operations and brings together the globe’s most noted experts to explore advancements and network in the cardiac arrhythmia field.

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Traveling to the Consumer Electronic Show, CES this year was different. This is my sixth year attending my favorite convention of the year, every year! With over 155,000 attendees this year’s convention was the busiest I have ever attended and not for the claustrophobic industry expert or consumer. ..

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The Consumer Electronics Show is expensive and for a lot of startups, it’s prohibitively expensive, thousands – or tens of thousands – of dollars to be a very small fish in a very big ocean. As a result, there are external activities that are affiliated with CES but aren’t actually part of the show floor and major event itself. One of those I attended a few nights ago, Startup Debut. Indeed, many of those companies were using that as their only shot at visibility during the event.
But if you’re a startup seeking funding, even that can be prohibitively expensive.
Enter a new event for this year, the Launch.it Pitch Event. Co-sponsored by ShowStoppers (yet another off-show-floor event I’ll be attending this evening), the Launch.IT event featured eight companies pitching their company from stage, seeking investment from the venture or angel community.
So how’d they do?

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One of the biggest trends already coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show — and it hasn’t actually started yet! — is a higher definition of TV screen called “Ultra HD”. Regular HD is apparently already passé, so TV manufacturers are now working with the equivalent of the Mac retina display in terms of pixel density, which is offering considerably higher resolution and far crisper screens.
But what does it mean? What defines an Ultra HD television screen?

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The Consumer Electronics Show started out early this year with an event two days prior to the official start of the show, Startup Debut. Held at a country club off-strip, it featured 40 or so small companies, many taking their first step into the spotlight with what can only be charitably be described as less than fully baked products.
New and innovative are what CES is all about for the AskDaveTaylor team, however, so we of course spent time checking things out so you can be on top of what’s coming out of Las Vegas this week, even if we had some stealth photography in the mix…
Again, keep in mind that at least a half dozen of the companies were either still in beta or were making their first announcement ever to a media-heavy room of tech press and video crews, including teams from CBS and Engadget.

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Conference report by contributing editor Gary Moskoff…
South by Southwest, SXSW, the original un-conference, is like nothing I have experienced before.
This was my first year attending and I was warned that it was going to be something different. To truly experience the conference, many said to follow the @SXSWparty feed on twitter and that I’d find all the parties, but that was not the case. One had to really think outside the box and do a lot of research to find the right parties to attend.
For instance, one of my favorites included the Skype party, a mix of bands and DJ’s performed, the party itself was a lot of fun, but I was most impressed by the way they included the audience in the show by live streaming individuals dancing around the perimeters of the show and then using the imagery in real time on the big screen as visuals to enhance the overall experience for all to enjoy. I also enjoyed the Warner Brothers show where LP and the Punch Brothers stole the show for me!

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A guest post by frequent contributor Gary Moskoff…
The San Francisco MusicTech Summit 10 was an experience I will not soon forget. In fact, I’ve attended six conventions this year, and this was simply the most informative one of them all. Held at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco’s Japantown, the convention wasn’t your typical Techy, Geeky, musical meet up. Approximately 1/3 of the attendees were musicians, while the other 2/3rds were technologists.
The conference itself was comprised of panel discussions, one after the other. Themes and topics that arose ranged from using API’s to prolifically share one’s products, to the licensing landscape and how some have become basement superstar phenomenon’s on YouTube.
My favorite session was the final panel of the day, where a group of seasoned industry executives who are shaping this industry discussed what was coming next. I almost fell off my chair when the host hand delivered a beer to all of the speakers (high class at the end of a great day).
Seeing panel after panel provides a very different experience than watching speaker after speaker, leading to a deeper peek into how tech and the music industries are colliding as we learned about both the successes and failures of the panelists. People tend to be more relaxed and open up a bit more when on a panel, than when they offer prepared remarks and these insights are extremely valuable to entrepreneurs, technologists, musicians, and pretty much everyone who attended that were looking for insights to improve their businesses and/or careers.

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Written by Contributing Editor Gary Moskoff…
My fifth visit to the Consumer Electronics Show was nothing short of epic!
This year was the busiest show since 2008 with 141,00+ people, from 80 countries descending on the Las Vegas Convention Center. The taxi lines were insane and making a cell phone call was next to impossible with so many gadget freaks in the same town!
If you find crowds intimidating, you simply did not want to attend this year’s show.
However, if seeing the latest, greatest gadgets and understanding the trends in the consumer electronics market is more important than anything else you do over the course of your year, then you were there and I probably bumped into you at some point during the week!

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